London TimeThe congregation blessed me and sent me today. Council members, sabbatical team members and parishioners all prayed and conveyed good wishes for me.
I too, promised to remember them in my prayers.
My faithful colleague, Pastor Ruth Ann Loughry wrote the following piece of couplets:
On the Occasion of Pastor Ronald T. Glusenkamp’s Departure
for Sabbatical
January 1, 2012
Bethany Lutheran Church
Here is our little blessing, to send you off Pastor Ron,
Away, away to London town for three months to be gone.
Some Sabbath rest is long over due,
We’re sure you’ll drink English tea, eat crumpets too!
To begin the journey a brief visit,
To Plum Village, not to miss it!
Daily mornin’ prayers at St. Martin in the Fields,
Rich Holy Spirit conversations, surely will yield.
Books, theater, walks, and sitting by the Thames,
Will certainly offer up a new and vibrant ministry lens.
We know you’ll ask great questions. That you always do!
About church and culture, Sabbath rest, people in and out of
pews!
How does the connection work - God in daily life?
For people to sense the Holy through their hopes, joy and
strife?
During our separation, we’ll be praying each Sunday just for
you,
Trusting our Lord to protect, bless and enrich your spirit,
through and through.
We promise to do our part on this Sabbatical trail,
To grow and listen and stretch, God will not let us fail!
We’ll be excited to catch God’s vision,
And hear of your renewed sense of mission.
Blow the Queen a kiss for us, yet don’t forget who is
Lord!
We’ll miss you in your seat.
May God keep us connected through Word and Sacrament,
until again we meet.
Our Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation, Luke 2:21-40
Pastor Ruth Ann Loughry
Bethany Lutheran Church
January 1, 2012
I thought long and hard about how to greet you this
morning. ‘The Lord be with you’ – now
that’s always a proper greeting. ‘Grace
and peace to you’, I often begin sermons with that as well. But truly…let’s be honest! Happy New Year! (Happy New Year!) ‘And also with you!’
New Year? Who is at
church on New Year’s Day at 9 am in the morning? We could be watching the Rose Parade or the
London parade or the Philadelphia Mummers Parade. Never heard of that one? Me neither!
Check it out on the Internet. (http://www.visitphilly.com/events/philadelphia/the-mummers-parade/)
Only a week has passed since we were singing, Silent Night
and opening up packages, ribbons littering our living rooms. But here we are, in just the last 12 hours,
having watched the ball drop in New York Times Square and welcoming in a new
calendar year. If you’re like me, you’ll continue to write 2011 for the next
two weeks.
Today does mark the beginning of a new year. All things are
new as the Holy Spirit makes them so.
All things are new because our eyes have seen the salvation of God. Baby
Jesus, lying in a manger of whom was said, ‘to you is born this day in the city
of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’ (Luke 2:11)
Mary and Joseph were doing what parents of newborns did in
that day. Instead of applying for a
Social Security number along with a birth certificate like we do, they went to
the temple. They had faith formation
rituals to perform. Mary needed
purification after giving birth. Jesus
needed to be circumcised and presented to God.
They were following the command given by God in Exodus: ‘Consecrate to
me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the
Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.’ (Exodus 13:2 NRSV) These were rituals to embrace the fullness of
God’s life prepared for in Jesus.
Parents of newborns like to pull out the wallet photos and
tell all the details of their baby’s birth.
Usually they receive, ‘ooh’s and aah’s’ from family and friends. How unusual that an old man, a stranger to them,
would take baby Jesus from Mary’s arms and begin to say his own last rites. ‘God, now you are dismissing me in peace, for
my eyes have seen your salvation, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and
the Jews!’ Now that’s a birth
announcement!
By now, perhaps Mary and Joseph had come to expect the
unexpected. They had seen with their own
eyes Gabriel and the shepherds, all telling them what a holy child this
was. In this moment, Simeon and then
Anna force them again to look at Jesus with wonder and awe. God is clearly revealing that salvation has
come in the diapered one they hold in their arms. Their eyes see Jesus and through the Holy
Spirit, they believe.
Simeon had been waiting – a long, long time. Just like Mary and Joseph, he was righteous
in the Lord’s sight. The Holy Spirit was
active in Simeon’s life and he was ‘guided’ into the temple on the day when the
young parents were arriving with Jesus.
How did he pick them out in the midst of the busy crowd? The Holy Spirit. How did he come to prophecy about Jesus’
future? The Holy Spirit. Simeon’s eyes looked into Jesus’ eyes and the
Spirit whispered, ‘this is the One.’
Can you remember a time when the Holy Spirit whispered to
you, ‘This is the One’? If we look back
just briefly we see the Holy Spirit’s fingerprints all over this salvation
story. The Spirit comes upon Mary for
her pregnancy. Elizabeth is filled with
the Holy Spirit when John leaps in her womb and she knows Mary carries the Baby
– the Savior. Now we have Simeon, guided
by the Spirit, coming into temple. Anna
as well prophesying about this baby child she’d never seen before.
It would be easy for us to gloss over the phrases about the
Holy Spirit, but they are as if yellow lights, causing us to pause at the
intersections of our lives and notice the Spirit’s movement. When the Holy Spirit guides us – we see salvation anew in numerous ways.
We may not talk as much as we could about the third person
of the Trinity, but remember Martin Luther words. ‘I cannot by my own understanding or belief
come to believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy
Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me
holy and kept me in the true faith…’
(Luther’s Small Catechism, explanation of the Third Article of the Creed
ELW, pg 1162)
All of that is to say, that when we see baby Jesus in the
manger, the Spirit is that whisper in our ears, ‘This is the One! This is God Emmanuel.’ It is true!
The Holy Spirit was moving then in the lives of Mary, Joseph, Simeon,
and Anna. It’s moving still today in our
lives as well.
As Pastor Ron departs on his three month Sabbatical, he too
will be listening for the Spirit’s movement.
God has given Pastor Ron many gifts – one of those being discernment and
vision. He can see the larger picture
and where this community of believers needs to go. As he spends time in the scriptures, in
prayer and in conversation with London church leaders, we trust that God will
cast a new vision. How can Bethany
continue to be relevant to God’s people here and in the larger metro community? The days of ‘come and see’ are gone. We must ‘go and tell.’ We are very thankful for the grant from the
Lilly Endowment to Bethany and Pastor Ron, which allow us this unique
opportunity to listen to God through the Holy Spirit.
It will be a time for us to listen as well. The Christ child has much to say through the
Spirit. How does salvation come in
Sabbath rest? How does our salvation
come in the signs that mark us as Christian community? We know the Spirit always works when
connected to the means of Word, Bath, and Table. We hear of God’s overflowing love in the
Words of Good News. We are washed in the
waters of forgiveness, claimed forever in Christ. We eat a foretaste of the feast to come. In these means of grace, we see salvation anew
as we listen and walk with the Christ Child and Holy Spirit. It is a new year’s day.
Speaking of new, did you notice that Simeon praised God
about his upcoming death? God had promised Simeon that he would not die until
he’d seen the Messiah. For many of us,
the promise of our upcoming death produces a least a bit of anxiety, if not
uncertainty or fear. But Christ makes
all things new, including death. Simeon
knew he could now die in peace. Yes, he
was wise enough to know that the Christ child would bring strife as well, but
death would no longer reign. Christ
would conquer death. This little newborn
life would change the end of life. ‘Now
ye need not fear the grave, Jesus Christ was born to save!’
We might be tempted to throw out the wonder of Christmas
right along with the holiday trash. It
would be so easy to box up God’s promises right along with the
decorations. As the first days of
January come upon us, we need not forget what has just happened. Simeon and Anna were right! This baby changes everything. It is a new year.
Listening to and seeing the Holy Spirit takes practice. When
guided by the Spirit, our eyes see God’s salvation! It is indeed a new year, because God said to
us on Christmas,
‘This is the One!’
Amen.
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